Bad Alice
by Sarah Noble
Summary: A story for anyone who likes to dwell on Sad Wonderland.
1. Default Chapter

ssssssss  
  
***Author's Note*** Please note that I'm a great Alice enthusiast, which is why I wrote these stories when I was sixteen, which was approximately eight hundred kajillion years ago, or possibly five years ago (probably the latter). The idea of a thoroughly bad Alice is not a new one and wasn't created by Mr. American McGee (as a matter of fact, his Alice was not bad at all, only determinedly violent). The current influx of murderous Alices somewhat weakens the stories I wrote years ago, but the hell with every last one of you. I'm posting them anyway. ( Cheers!  
  
-SN  
  
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Part One- Beginning  
  
It was cold. It was bitterly, bitterly cold. Nighttime is always a bad time to be waiting in the dark, simply because it's so dark. But nothing is so bad as waiting at night in the cold.  
  
Alice bit her wrist, trying to warm it up with the inside of her mouth. Both her wrists were numb. Her hands felt nonexistent. Not even the rough bark of the tree was registering under her pale fingers.  
  
Birds shifted uneasily on their perches in the trees. Alice twisted her head around to work out the kink in her neck, but it was only a stab of frosty air that made it hurt. She balled her fists against the tree and gritted her teeth. It had been an unpleasant day already, made more so by the fact that she could not remember where she had been.  
  
Aprons are not meant as extra clothing. They're meant as decorative pockets, or to keep a dress clean. Still, she couldn't help but tuck it around her knees as a token effort to keep warm. It had only just dawned on her this morning that everything before this morning was a complete blank. Only the routine of the world remained clear to her.  
  
Cold darkness and trees. Always trees. No underbrush for cover or to break up the breeze, as a normal forest might have. Just trees.  
  
Alice shifted against the iron roots and drew her knees up to her chest. That man was there again, like clockwork. Like neat little spoons lying in a drawer. Neat little silver spoons, all predictable in a row, shiny silver- She shook her head. The cold was making her sleepy and stupid. Like clockwork he was there. Standing by the edge of the path, mouth hung open. She hated his hat most of all. A shabby, practically shapeless mockery of a hat with the display tag still sticking in the brim, "In this size 3/4 shillings."  
  
::Just go away::, she thought. ::I know you're there, so just go away.::  
  
But he wouldn't, and she knew it. She was only making idle conversation in her head. He would keep standing there until she came out onto the path, and then he'd start up again, like clockwork. Like a shiny, stupid-hatted spoon in a drawer.  
  
No one ever did anything here until she came along. It was like being a key to one of those curious little houses with the mechanical rooms inside. You put the key in the hole by the door of each room and wind. Each room would do something different. The wooden birds would flap their wings. The wooden monkeys would wave their arms. A different reaction from each room, but it all came down to where you put the key. And as soon as you took the key away, they stopped.  
  
She would have preferred wooden monkeys and parrots, really she would. Instead she got him. He and all the others, stationed around the woods, only activating when they were called upon to perform their parts for her.  
  
Alice sighed. She felt like gnawing the tree in frustration. She felt like gnawing on his hat in frustration. She felt like setting off a very big explosion, like a large firecracker. She stood up instead.  
  
One leather sole hit the path. He did nothing. It twisted slowly in the dirt, dug out a stone, and kicked it away. He stood there silently, deaf to the world. The toe nudged a scoop of earth out and pushed up more small stones and cobble. A beetle crawled out of its hiding place beneath the rocks and trundled over the top of the shoe. The man stood inanimate.  
  
The shoe bore down heavily with the shifting of weight and another planted itself on the path.  
  
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" The man sprang up at once, an indignantly befuddled look on his ugly face, as if he'd never been faced with so ridiculous a question in his life as the inquiry of his own birthday.  
  
"You've already asked me that," Alice frowned unpleasantly, glaring at the Mad Hatter (for that was his name in these woods). "If you can't think of something original--and I know you can't--why don't you just sod off?"  
  
That last part was something she hadn't intended. She prided herself on not losing her temper with these people. But this was becoming too much.  
  
The Mad Hatter looked disapprovingly at her. "Little girls," he huffed pompously, "I say, that little girls should be heard and not seen." He paused to take a pinch of snuff, which he spilled all over the front of his waistcoat. "Seen--but not heard," he finished, casting her a haughty glance.  
  
She didn't even bother to correct him. It wasn't worth it. Alice curtsied neatly, toes pointed out.  
  
"If you don't mind, I've a fancy to see the Queen at croquet today," she simpered. "Can you tell me how to get into the royal garden?"  
  
The Mad Hatter shuddered visibly. The Queen's name had that effect on everyone. It seemed to be having more than the usual effect on him today. Alice smiled sweetly and flounced off down the path.  
  
"You can't help it, you know!" The Hatter shouted desperately down the path after her. "We're all mad here!"  
  
"That's not your line!" Alice spat in return and disappeared over the hill.  
  
She walked along the path, feeling moody. She really had no interest in playing croquet today, though she knew she would, just the same.  
  
Alice sighed.  
  
She oughtn't to have lost her temper like that to him. It was the weather that made her so mad. It was night the entire time she had been hiding from him, and now that she left him it was a sunny mid-afternoon. Warm weather never catered to her when she had a mind to go against the rules.  
  
There was a green field coming up on her left-hand side and Alice had a notion that she could walk through it and come to the palace without having to take the road. Whenever possible, she avoided the pathways, which led as often as not to more people who would chatter nonsense at her. The people, she decided, were the worst to deal with, followed by the animals, which were followed by the plants. She disliked Wonderland in that order.  
  
* * *  
  
"'Ere, wot's all this?" The dandelion flailed about angrily. "Shut up," Alice muttered bad-temperedly. "Nobody asked your opinion." She trampled her way through the flowerbed, her stockings torn apart by tiny thorns that were flung across her path. "Well they're bloody well getting' it, ain't they?" a daisy shouted viciously. "Just you step over 'ere, missy, and you'll get somethin' else to think about!" "Shut.UP.." Alice tore up the daisy patch entirely, flinging it away in one hand. Small squeals of fear issued from the rest of the bed. She dusted her hand off on her apron and tried to think. Think, think-  
  
::Think, think.::  
  
Thinking was very difficult. The Wonderland did not encourage any thoughts besides the odd "Goodness, what curious people these are!" every so often. Alice was tired of the word 'curious,' as it seemed now to be a nicer word for 'inexplicable bother.' Everything was beginning to bother her.  
  
There was a moment back there, where she could have said no. There must have been some point in which she could have walked away.  
  
::There was a man on the path.what did he say? What did he say?  
  
"I can give you one piece of advice, my sweet."::  
  
"H-having some trouble, dearie?" a lily asked timidly from beside her left foot. Alice started and looked blankly down at it.  
  
The lily quavered under her gaze. "Do you need--directions to the garden?" it asked hopefully, gesturing off into the distance with one leaf. "I hear the Queen is playing croquet today-"  
  
"The Queen is always playing croquet today," Alice answered bitterly. "And I know exactly where I'm going--I just don't know where I've been." :: "I am not your sweet, I don't believe," she answered with considerable more confidence than she felt.  
  
"One piece of advice and that is all-" he continued unheeding. ::  
  
But what was that one piece? Alice frowned. The lily, sensing more anger, quailed against the ground and whimpered pitifully. Alice frowned at the lily again, then stood up and gently crushed it beneath her shoe. She stared pensively into the distance, absent-mindedly grinding the flower under her heel. The other flowers took the hint and remained silent.  
  
"I don't know where I've been," she said at last, but to herself. "I know where I'm going, but I don't know where I've been. I know where I'm going, but I don't know anything else."  
  
"I should say you don't!" one stupidly brave daisy shouted, and was immediately suppressed by its neighbors.  
  
Alice flung one last threatening glance around the flowerbed (every petal shook under her gaze) and stormed off to think somewhere else. She was mad at herself for stomping the lily. She was mad at herself for a lot of things, though she couldn't remember any of them just now.  
  
"All right, Alice," she said aloud and loudly. "All right now, Alice, listen up!"  
  
She faltered. The tone was firm and the words seemed impressive, but she found she had very little to add to it.  
  
"You." she began again, "You know where you are. You're in the Wonderland. You know what you've been at just now. You just stomped a lily. You know where you're going. You're going, for the umpteenth time, to play croquet with the Queen for the first time. "But," she continued in a less determined voice, "you don't know where you've been. That's a poser. It's very curious. It's bloody inconvenient and it's no good pretending that it's not important. The obvious solution is to sit down and wait until it comes to you."  
  
She sat down on a large rotting log by the side of the field and thought. Nothing came to her. She stared up at the sky, down at her shoes, along the side of the field, back towards the way she came. Nothing came to her.  
  
Alice took her shoe off and shook a sizeable pebble from inside it. "The trick is," she muttered while she redid the strap, "to know what's true and what's not. To jog one's memory with things that one might have done in the past.  
  
"If I knew what I'd done in the past," she continued, "I wouldn't have to jog my memory with it because I'd have already remembered." :: "It's this: you should always do what you want to, and not let others lead you onto their own business."I  
  
"And that's what I'm trying to do now," Alice said aloud, startled that she had remembered something. He had indeed said those words to her, and looked at her in a certain way. Not a way that might have any sort of emotional meaning, but it was a look that was clearly intended to be certain. She frowned at the memory and tried to recall what incident it had led up to. It had led to.something awful, something so. :: "You want a little girl, is that it?" she shrieked. ::  
  
Alice shuddered hard and tried to turn away from that mental path. Down there were things she didn't want to remember. She felt she should, seeing as she had sat down to do just that. But it was not something she wanted to dwell on.  
  
"Not something I want to dwell on," she said aloud. "I'd rather talk circles round myself than say anything worthwhile at all."  
  
"No I don't," she added meekly. She was so very fond of having arguments with herself, though she rarely ever won them. "I'd like to know where I've been and if I've done anything wrong there." :: She gritted her teeth as her knuckles scraped against the stone. Her hands dug into the sheet of ivy covering the outer wall.::  
  
Alice sighed and ran her hands through her hair, stopped halfway by a large bow tied into it. She yanked the ribbon out bad-temperedly, then relented and tied it back in. It wasn't the ribbon's fault, after all. Besides, it was never good to tempt the Wonderland by changing something that was part of the mold.  
  
The light was fading and Alice knew she would have to decide on some course of action fairly soon. She remembered enough to know that she didn't want to spend another night shivering among the trees.  
  
She turned about on the log and faced towards the castle. It was a dismal, rabbled old building, ponderous and verbose about its shabbiness. A few red pinnets fluttered from its spires in the dying breeze. A deceptively simple-looking topiary maze surrounded its outer walls. The walls bothered her most. Everything was a bother at this time of day.  
  
"The only thing to do now is play croquet," Alice said to herself in a resigned tone.  
  
She stood up and strode off towards the palace. There was a warm scent rising up from the grass as she trampled it, and made her think of Lancaster for some reason or other. It was a name with which she was familiar. She bent back larger wisps of grass with her small hands and looked up at the sky. Small birds were wheeling high above, moving westward. She shook the hair from her eyes and plodded on.  
  
One interesting thing about the Wonderland was that distances were often deceptive, and though the palace had seemed ages away from the field, she found that before too long, it rose up before her quite suddenly. One foot was already on the stone-flagged entrance to the maze, when Alice inexplicably backed off. She stood for a time, contemplating the entrance. A large brass arch with the words "The Queen of Hearts' Garden" wrought on it loomed over her head. Ruddy-faced roses climbed up the sides of it and down the stone pillars supporting the bars from which the arch sprang. It was all very predictable.  
  
"I don't think..." Alice began.  
  
"That's a shame," said a large crow in passing, as it flew over the wall. Alice frowned, though she was more than used to regular insults.  
  
"I don't think," she began again, then paused, as if daring someone else to interject, "I don't think that.that I will like the Queen of Hearts."  
  
She'd never liked the Queen of Hearts, not once in the eight hundred times that she had first made her acquaintance.  
  
"I don't think that this...is the way back to my house," she continued loudly. The sky had perceptibly darkened at these words and she now shivered in the lack of sunlight.  
  
"I don't think.that I will play croquet today, after all," she finished defiantly.  
  
Alice instantly knew that she'd gone too far. A great rumble of thunder suddenly burst out overhead and lightning struck the brass sign over her head. She fled screaming into the topiary, hands flung over her head protectively. There was a last parting shot of lightning, and the clouds moved away.  
  
Good job, Alice, she thought bitterly, stomping along the path towards the center of the maze. Bally good job back there, you should get a medal. You really are stupid. You did it on purpose and you really are daft sometimes.  
  
Now that she was out of danger, she began to complain loudly, though all the time still making her way towards the palace.  
  
"Why do I have to play croquet every afternoon?" she asked, seemingly of nobody in particular, though really she asked it of the Wonderland in general. "Why must I drop whatever I'm doing and rush off to the castle whenever it becomes mid-afternoon? It's inconvenient!"  
  
Nothing offered a reply for this. Alice swung her arms back and forth as she walked, tearing off little leaves and branches from the topiary bushes. "It's not fair," she started again. "I wouldn't have to play croquet ever, if not for that little copper's nark the Rabbit, going off and snitching to the Queen that I'm here."  
  
Alice was very upset about the way things were turning out today. Her resolution to figure out where she'd been had fizzled into nothing and she was once more forced to play croquet with the hated Queen. "I'll give him a hard shake or two the very next time I see him," she said hotly, still thinking about the White Rabbit. She was just imagining picking him up in both hands (for he was hardly half her size) and giving him a good rough shake, when she turned a corner and found the croquet match already underway.  
  
She brushed the hair back from her temples, straightened her bow and stepped into the open grounds. ***  
  
"I've got to find my own flamingo then, I suppose," she said to herself, but loudly enough so that anyone who might want to help her with this task could.  
  
There was an odd silence and Alice looked up and around at the company. The entire royal deck was there, attended by many lesser suits and a general company of courtiers and courtesans. They were all staring at her, mouths very wide open, which didn't surprise Alice in the least. Wonderland people often made strange faces at her. But where was.  
  
"The Queen!" a small, high-pitched voice squealed from beside her. She turned to see the White Rabbit, peering out from over his enormous ruffled collar, carrying a weighty gold trumpet in both hands. "Long Live the Queen!"  
  
The entire company echoed this sentiment mechanically, though with a general fearful quavering, which was not unnatural. Alice turned to find out where the Queen was and whether she ought not to take cover, in case the Queen was in one of her more destructive moods. But that immensely prominent figure did not appear, neither was there a general assemblage of people waiting to have their heads cut off. Only the present company, which was now pressing in on her rather unpleasantly.  
  
"I don't understand.where is she?" Alice asked after some time, addressing herself to the Rabbit. He scuttled backwards and landed on his tail at her approach.  
  
"Why, ::she::!" he said, pointing at Alice. "The Red Queen is dead.Long Live Queen Alice!"  
  
The company automatically repeated this with as much vehemence as the last time. A few cards did somersaults in the crowd, which the royal children laughed at. Alice simply stared.  
  
"This isn't right," she said after looking around at the company. "I'm supposed to play croquet with the Queen. And lose, badly. That's the way it always is. That's the way it ::should be::," she added, emphasizing these last words by stamping her feet. The White Rabbit, its eyes ridiculously wide now, stammered and gibbered for some time. Alice took him by the ears and shook him, satisfied that she could at least accomplish one goal she had set today.  
  
"But my good Queen," he gasped after a moment, kicking until she put him down, "Does.does not my good Queen remember? ::She:: beat at croquet many times. She had the Red Queen removed. The old matriarch is gone. Long Live Queen Alice!"  
  
Again there was a unanimous affirmation. Alice simply sputtered incoherently for a while. "What do you mean, removed?" she finally spat at the Rabbit, who crouched low on the ground, trying to hide behind his large round collar. "Tell me!" After this got no response, she thought for a moment and amended it to, "As your Queen, I order you to tell me!"  
  
That should get a story from him, if nothing else, she thought angrily.  
  
The Rabbit suddenly assumed a very dodgy attitude, his normally high voice sunk to a mutter. "The Queen, that is." he said slowly, glancing out of the corner of his red eyes at those around him, "Your most Excellent Majesty.a very brilliant coup.will go down in the annals as a most successful campaign.er.circumstances being what they are, however.but in light of the fact that you are the Successor, that is to say." he pawed the trumpet in his hand nervously, shifting it from one hand to the other, and sometimes balancing it on his head. "A ::gratis:: that would cover any ahem! Extenuating Circumstances, may be drafted up by your Most Excellent Person during the next meeting of the month.certainly sufficient to clear up any misunderstandings, you see."  
  
"Are you suggesting I ::killed her::?" Alice shouted incredulously. The entire company quailed and glared venomously at the Rabbit, who stammered himself into silence. Alice looked around her in shock, and every person that fell under her gaze looked away immediately, gnawing at his knuckles in consternation.  
  
"I never hurt anyone," she said loudly. She had meant it to be a firm statement of Fact, but it came out sounding more like a plea. "Really, I haven't!" she added unhappily. No one seemed to want to look her in the eye. "I haven't. . .I never did. . ."  
  
"Long Live the Queen!" the Rabbit shouted suddenly in a harsh voice. The Company, relieved of their awkward silence, began shouting her praise over and over, as if to keep her from asking any more embarrassing questions (which was, in fact, just what they intended). "Long Live Queen Alice! Long Live the Queen! Long Live Queen Alice! Long Live the Queen!"  
  
"Why won't you believe me?" Alice shouted, but nobody heard her. "I never killed anyone! I only just flattened a lily this morning and I feel badly enough as it is!"  
  
Still bellowing her praise, the Company began to move off quickly from the croquet ground and towards the palace, the White Rabbit skittering ahead as fast as he could go. Alice ran to catch up, but they had soon outdistanced her. Topiary walls kept leaping up in front of her, where before there had been a straight walkway. From far off down the central walk came the sound of the palace gates slamming shut, then a sudden silence.  
  
"What's going on?" Alice asked miserably. 


	2. Part Two

::: "Always tea time, and never time enough to wash up. That's too bad," Alice said, as she walked alongside the lanky, shambling man. The afternoon was a warm and golden one. Large rays of light shone through the trees on either side of the road, splotching and dappling the grass into spots and patterns. A hazy dust, kicked up by their feet on the dusty road, lingered in the air behind them, little brown motes caught in the sunlight.  
  
"What do you do when you run out of clean things to use?" she asked.  
  
"I think it high time we changed the subject," The Hatter announced loudly. Alice sighed, though she had given up on straight answers long ago. She moved away from him.  
  
"Where are you going now?" he called as she began to walk off the path and into the woods.  
  
"I simply must get into that lovely garden I saw earlier," she said over her shoulder to him. "I know it's somewhere about here, and I'm not stopping until I find it." She pushed back the branches of a large, thick fir and stepped into the shade of the forest.  
  
"Come back!" the Hatter shouted suddenly. Being a good girl, Alice did as she was told and obediently trotted back towards the road. The Hatter smiled at her in a way that made her shiver. He was so very ugly, and his left eye had a habit of getting about by itself every so often, regardless of what direction the other was pointed in. He lifted his hat politely and offered her his arm.  
  
"Let us talk awhile and perhaps I can help you find that garden," he said amicably. Not wishing to be rude, Alice took his arm reluctantly. His tweed jacket was worn and darned in several places. She turned away in apparent interest at a large flowerbed that had appeared by the wayside, though really she could not stand the overbearing smell of tobacco that hung close about his clothes and hair. They walked on sometime in silence and Alice was just beginning to regret coming back to him, when he presently began to speak again.  
  
"How old are you?" he asked. Alice replied, "Eleven and a half." She was very proud of that half a year, which she often used to lord it over her younger cousins.  
  
"How old aren't you?" the Hatter asked quickly, with a sidelong look at her.  
  
"Er..." Alice thought to herself. "I'm not eighty-two years old," she finished truthfully.  
  
The Hatter nodded to himself approvingly. "That's a good age not to be," he declared seriously, then glanced behind them down the path, as if anxious not to be overheard. "Do you know how old the Queen is?" he continued in a low voice.  
  
"No," Alice responded, mystified. The hatter winked at her in a very disconcerting manner, then put his mouth to her ear quite confidentially. Alice wrinkled her nose at the awful smell of stale bread and pipe-tobacco that blew over her.  
  
"The Queen," he whispered, "is seven-hundred and ninety-three years old."  
  
Alice started. "That's impossible!" she declared. "At least.I've never heard of someone living that long. I don't believe it can be done." She shuddered quite perceptibly as the Hatter put his free hand on hers in what no doubt was meant to be a soothing manner.  
  
"Don't worry your head about impossible ideas, my dear," he said silkily. "They'll only put your mind out of sorts and at odds with itself, which is no state to be in. Better to believe what you're told and have no battles over impossibilities raging in your head. Might cause an undue amount of damage otherwise."  
  
Perhaps that's why philosophers always seem so serious and bad-tempered, Alice thought to herself. They have so much to debate in their heads, that it gives them headaches from all the fighting.  
  
"What are you thinking of, my dear?" the Hatter smiled down at Alice. She shook her head, as if to relieve it of any dangerously impossible ides.  
  
"I was only thinking about not thinking about impossibilities," she said after a pause. The Hatter smiled wider and patted her head knowingly. Alice found that, like impossible ideas, if she just didn't think about the smell of pipe that came from him, it didn't bother her very much.  
  
"The reason," the Hatter continued, "that I mention the Queen's age is because she is no longer in a state to be the Head of Wonderland. I'm sure you agree that no one that old would be capable of running a country by herself."  
  
Alice nodded slowly. His words were slow and measured and sounded very much like Fact. His voice had a not unpleasant town accent, with a small lilt in it from time to time that lightened any subject on which he chose to speak. Crickets buzzed in the bushes as they continued to walk along the dusty path, through the stifling quiet of the afternoon.  
  
"But then.who will succeed her?" Alice asked presently. The Hatter smiled a crooked smile and stroked her head with his nervous, twitching hand, and this time she did not flinch.  
  
"Who knows, my sweet?" he purred in her ear, twirling a lock of her hair between two long fingers. "Who knows?" :::  
  
***  
  
Alice wandered about the Royal gardens sadly, looking for a path that might lead her to the front gate. But all the paths seemed to be stubbornly against her and kept leading her awry.  
  
"What was the point of making me play croquet, then?" she asked in exasperation, as she turned a corner and found herself actually walking out through the brass gate. But having no alternative, she left the gardens.  
  
Alice walked slowly through the field, trying to make sense of what had happened today. She hadn't hurt or killed anyone, so how could she possibly be Queen? She wasn't even sure that if she had, it would qualify her to be Queen. But if not, how else did one become Queen? Alice sat down on the ground, folded her hands in her lap and tried very hard to remember all she knew about military campaigns and overthrowing governments. But the sun was making her tired, as usual, and she couldn't recall much of anything she had learned about that particular subject. Instead, she lay down in the long grass and promptly fell asleep. 


End file.
